Chapter 12
The scents of warmed honey, wine, and sweet spices had Locke making a door into his kitchen before he was fully awake for the day.
Mountains of pears, more than Locke realized he even had, were spread throughout the kitchen. Some were halved or quartered, some were whole, a giant rack of them had been poached and were resting before they were portioned for whatever concoction Clara had planned for them. They looked perfect.
Clara did not. Her silvery hair was frizzed, a look he would have pinned on sleep-mussed if he didn't know better. The woman hadn't moved once in her sleep the night before. This morning, she had the bellows under one arm, a spoon in the other hand, and she was using it to turn the faucet off. She was genuinely frazzled, and her skin was flushed all over.
All over. She was standing there in only her nightgown, her robe abandoned. The silk hugged every single curve, and he finally got to see her breasts filling the cups naturally. The nightgown was a bit small, though, and the vision of those two plump orbs smushed together was something he intended to store in his brain for a good, long time.
He couldn't address that now, not when his kitchen was about to burn down.
"Ratmouth! Fattooth!" Locke yelled as he took the bellows from Clara and got to work pushing the fire back. He told himself not to snap at her and took a breath before saying, "Please ask for help next time. I don't know why they're not out here, but I have minions to do this. They don't want hellfire to eat the house any more than I do."
"They warned me of that, of how the fire works here, before they left, but I thought I could handle—"
"They left?" Locke straightened up sharply. "What the hell is going on here? They just started up a fire and left?" The smell of the pears simmering should have settled him. They were a favorite of his, and he was sure that scent was the source of his nagging erection, but right now he wasn't finding any comfort in the fact he could snag a few of those before Clara noticed. The dozens she was poaching, she'd never know.
How could his minions just leave her like this? They'd made it clear the day before, when he'd ripped them up about letting her outside, that they were only agreeing with him because they wanted her safe, not out of any allegiance to him. To leave her with a live fire in the house? He hoped they weren't planning on returning, because he would fire them right into that damn fire.
"They're coming back," she said with a little laugh, obviously unaware that her words conjured images of the most enjoyable meal of roast demon he'd have in years.
Hmm. Less enjoyable, though, because he didn't think Clara would like it. He'd have to share it with Druxel or Killian. Not nearly as pleasant of dinner dates as Clara.
"They just…took a day off?" Locke wanted to at least know why he was planning to eat the best servants he'd ever fished out of the River Styx.
"No, of course not! Or, not without my permission. Ratmouth took Fattooth to the doctor."
Locke couldn't muffle his groan of irritation. "Did she cut an arm off again? Or jam her leg in a meat grinder? Don't let her fool you, she…" His words died out at the look of fear in Clara's eyes. "Why did she go to the doctor?"
"Her tooth is infected. I made her go."
Locke rolled his eyes up to the ceiling. "Clara, why in Hell would you send her to the doctor for that? She's a minion, their bodies are always janky like that."
He returned to the fire, which had definitely gotten unruly under Clara's inexpert treatment and would take a good bit of attention to get stabilized before he could let her near it, but he was immediately distracted by the clatter of the pan Clara had been washing landing hard in the bottom of the sink. "So she deserves to be in pain? She didn't choose to be what she is. Nobody does. Not you or me or…or anyone."
He wasn't about to correct her, not when he caught the warble in her voice. This wasn't just irritation at him for being flippant about a minion—who, seriously, was lucky he'd never slaughtered, so she had a pretty damn good life—this was frustration over a lot of things. "Hey, why don't you go back to your baking, and I'll do the dishes? It looks like you've got a lot of work to do."
It seemed reasonable, but she picked up that pan again and started scrubbing the hellfire out of it. "If I do? If I let you do the dishes? What happens later? Fattooth says her tooth swells like this all the time, and you don't care. She says you kick her sometimes, too. Are you going to kick her because you had to wash the dishes?"
If Clara had asked in a calmer voice, absolutely. Minions were nearly as hilarious as cherubim when they were punted across the room. They sounded like rubber kickballs when the air whooshed out of them. The tremor in her bottom lip gave him a pretty good idea of how poorly that bit of sport would be received, so he said, "No," and he meant it. "I'll wash the dishes, and I won't punish her, because you made her go, and you asked me not to punish her."
That settled Clara slightly, but the rosy tones flooded her cheeks and chest again. "Will you…punish me?"
Locke's knuckles went white on the bellows as he worked through her words, her coloring, her scent. Everything indicated that she was ever so slightly aroused, like she knew what she could be implying with her question even if she didn't know what that would truly entail.
He flattened the bellows slowly, but the time he meant to come up with an appropriate thing to say was wasted on the sight of her profile as she rinsed the pan off. Her rear jutted out far enough that the hem of her night dress couldn't brush against her thighs, not the way she stretched up. And her arms, fully bared and engaged, had the shape of a woman who could handle herself with heavy equipment. He liked that more than he'd realized before. Soft and strong.
"Only if you ask me to punish you." The words slithered right out, and he couldn't even apologize for them.
"Why would I ask you that?" Her words, her tone, lacked any guile whatsoever. As pure as she was. But her eyes had traveled slightly as well, and he did wish he could apologize for still wearing his boxers instead of proper pants that would hide the bulge that her continued existence in his life was turning into a permanent feature.
"Get back to your baking, human, before you talk yourself into a sticky situation."
"Tell me about the fire," Clara said when she'd mustered up the courage to have casual conversation with Locke—several hours later. The tension of the morning hadn't gone away, but it had cooled some. "We always joke about how hot Hell is, but it's actually kind of cold…except now. That fire is…incredibly hot."
Locke nodded as he worked the bellows at a deliberate pace. He'd gotten dressed to do the first run to the shop only to strip back down to his underclothes when he'd broken a sweat. She found herself fascinated by the mechanics of his shoulder muscles, so well defined under his ruddy and slightly shimmering skin. "Incredibly dangerous, too. Hellfire will travel to its food once it's burned through what it's given. It's impossible to fire-proof anything; Hellfire will always find a way. The unstable areas of Hell are too hot for you to survive in. Here, it's cold, but safer. There's no other heat source. Not natural, anyway." He looked to the stove and ovens, all electric. Clara had thought that was a peculiar choice before, most professionals preferring gas, but that would have been natural fire.
"What about candles? If I put a candle in a candlestick and lit it, would it be okay?"
"Please don't do that. My sister and I used to do that just to mess with our mother. They'd consume the whole dining room in minutes. We thought it was hilarious at the time. She didn't."
"You have a sister?" Clara nearly said and a mother but realized how dumb that was. Demons reproduced the same way humans did. With sex.
She swallowed hard and went back to the dough she was laminating.
"And some half-siblings, although we were never close. Not even my sister and I were that close. Demon families are only as strong as their sire's clan, and our sire didn't want us."
"Do you talk to your sister ever?"
"She died a
century back. She was a firefighter; things didn't go so well for her."
Clara went silent and dropped her eyes back to her dough as she thought about how he'd talked about the fire. Was there a hint of sadness in it? No, not that she could pick up on, but there had to be something more than that. Something more than we played with fire, she died by fire, end of story.
"Hey, it's okay. I told you, we weren't close."
A strange thing for him to say until she sniffled and realized she'd already shed a tear, one Locke was so acutely aware of he set the bellows down and reached across the counter to wipe it off her cheek. "I'm sorry. I just can't imagine losing my sisters."
"I can't imagine being so close to my sisters to cry about losing them."
She scowled and turned away from him, but he doubled up with a gentle pat on the head.
"I'm sorry, Clara. I don't mean to speak so harshly. I think it might be nice to care about someone that much, in fact."
"Family, you mean? You must have other people you care about."
Locke shook his head and returned to the hellfire.
Clara made sure she turned away before he saw another tear fall. She couldn't imagine anything lonelier.
Chapter 13
Locke walked into chaos in the prep area of Sweet Moments by Jubilee. Eloise was flinging words, Hazel was flinging spatulas, one of the shop girls was flinging her body over the centerpieces to protect them.
He pushed up the sleeves of his dress shirt before grabbing Hazel by the waist and physically carrying her away from the table. She shrieked and bit down on his arm, and for a split second he nearly dropped her as his brain short-circuited.
"I'm trying to help you!" he roared at Eloise when the connection snapped.
"I didn't realize it was you!" Eloise shouted back as Hazel released his flesh to say, "Why are you siding with her?"
Locke set Hazel back down on her chunky, spiky boots but kept his arm around her waist. She was a lot scrawnier than Clara, and squirmy in that weird feral cat way, and although she smelled like sugar, it wasn't the baked, well-spiced sugar of Clara. Then again, he wasn't holding her to touch her. He was holding her to protect those centerpieces.
"I came out of the closet. Who the Hell else would it be?" he snapped at Eloise.
"What were you doing in the closet?" the shop girl said.
Eloise patted her hand. "Be a dear and go check the front, would you? I think I heard the bell ring."
Nobody had heard the bell ring, that was clear enough from the scowl the girl shot at Locke, but it was also clear she didn't want to deal with this. She shrugged and wandered away as Hazel squirmed in Locke's grip.
"And you, I'm not siding with you because you're throwing stuff. Hell's nutsack, I can't even imagine how Clara would react if she saw the two of you carrying on like this."
"Like she always does," Eloise said loftily.
"She breaks it up." Hazel sounded far grouchier about this.
"Then call me Clara, and stop whatever you're fighting about. Do you need actual advice? Or someone to settle this for you?"
Hazel shrugged and shimmied out of Locke's hold. "No, it was dumb. Eloise can do what she wants." The girl was definitely pouting as she stomped off to one of the rooms adjacent to the main work area, but if Eloise wasn't concerned, neither was he.
"The way Clara talks about you two made it seem like everything here was sunshine and kittens."
"Clara doesn't see the badness in people. You're probably completely invisible to her."
"I have good qualities. I broke your fight up, didn't I? I could have just let you slay each other and spent a happy evening consoling Clara into never coming home so I don't have to deal with her angel problem. Which is also a good quality. And I'm going to help you move this stuff out to the van."
Eloise's hackles smoothed down. "Sorry. We're a little more stressed than usual." She cast a pointed glare at him. "I wonder why."
He held his hands up in defense. "I'm here to help, for a little while. Just point me in the right direction."
It did feel good to help out. Hell wasn't exactly a group effort. Demons teamed up to get a job done because they got something out of it. Here on Earth, Locke got a weird sense of satisfaction just getting approving looks from Eloise.
Then again, the reward here was not getting his brain scrambled by her zapper.
He was feeling really good about things when he gathered up all the empty trays, drew himself a door in the store room, and walked into the relative chaos of his kitchen.
Ratmouth was back and doing his best to help, but that fire had grown into a full-time task, and Clara was running too many other chores. They needed Fattooth, and Locke had to assume if she wasn't here, she wasn't going to be returning anytime soon.
He shimmied by Clara, who gave him the weakest of smiles, and dropped the trays in his sink just in time to answer the oven timer. He grabbed the trays of scones two at a time and ran them over to the dining room table, already laid out with at least a hundred pieces. Rolls, cookies, pastries, some single serve items, some large enough to feed an entire table.
"What is all this for?" he asked once the oven was clear. "You said there'd only be one more load to go to the store today."
"There is," she said as she attempted to wipe sweat off her brow. Locke rushed over with a clean towel and dabbed at her forehead, and she gave him a look far more grateful than he deserved for the simple act. "It's tomorrow's event. I told you this time of year is crazy for us. Eloise has all the flowers, Hazel's doing the decorations and a centerpiece. God, they must be falling apart over there."
She spun on her heel when the mixer turned off, accidentally knocking over a bowl of egg whites.
"Shit!" she swore, only for her cheeks to go flaming red afterward. Locke had never heard her swear before and was just as startled as she was.
"Quell the fire and clean up these eggs, Ratmouth. You, little miss, need to sit down for a minute."
"I don't have time!" Her hands were trembling, her pupils dilated. She'd taken on too much work today, and it was getting to her.
He rubbed a smudge of flour off her cheek before she could pull away from him. "You do. It's only a minute. You'll make yourself sick like this, right? That's something that happens to humans, I've been told."
Clara grimaced. "I suppose you never get sick, or tired. You never need to sit, do you?"
"I do. I may not be as fragile as you, but I have my moments."
Clara puffed her chest up enough to distract him with the swell pushing against him. "Well, this isn't my moment, either. I have so much more I need to get done, Locke. This isn't working."
"Let's do this together," he said, hoping to calm her down and score himself some points in the process. "What are you doing now?"
"Laminating the croissants."
Locke had never made croissants before. He liked them well enough—who didn't?—but the process for making them was too tedious for the payoff. Still, it would be a good distraction for her to teach him. He shooed Ratmouth out of the kitchen and asked Clara to show him how this worked.
She removed a sheet of dough from the fridge and laid it out on the counter, smearing a layer of butter on it and folding it over itself in thirds. He watched her begin to roll it out, pushing down enough that it flattened evenly into roughly the same shape as it was initially, but now with more layers of dough and butter making up the sheet.
"Show me again," he urged, to a slightly miffed look, but she obliged, trading that sheet out for the next. This time, when she picked up the rolling pin, he stepped up behind her and reached around, grabbing her hands and pressing his chest against his back.
Her breath caught for only a second before she started rolling the dough out. "Like this," she said softly. "You want to go fast so the butter doesn't melt, but you don't want to go too hard and ruin the layers."
"That's a shame," he murmured against her ear
. "I prefer slow and hard."
Her hands stilled under his. "No, it's gotta be fast and…Locke, I don't…"
"Shh," he whispered as he let one of her hands go so he could lift her pigtail out of the way, giving him access to the edge of her jaw. He got close enough to it that static shot through her as he breathed along her flesh. "I do. Let me help you relax for a few minutes."
No ghosts. The servants may have been demons, but they were incredibly well-behaved for demons and had been told not to return to the kitchen. There was no one to interrupt a private moment here.
Clara shook her head, but she wasn't sure what she was protesting. Neither of her sisters had any problems with flings or even one-night stands, and those men only had to be attractive and charming.
Not even. Eloise was notorious for sleeping with men who were huge jerks.
Locke was all of that. Even here in Hell, with nothing making him look more human, he was incredibly attractive. And he managed to be a jerk and charming at the same time.
This could be her fling. This could be how she made the best of her time in Hell. This was her chance to do something she'd never done before, something she'd never be able to do again once she finally returned to Earth.
He kissed the edge of her jaw, and she didn't shy away. She didn't when he nuzzled his nose behind her ear, either, or when he kissed the back of her neck. He kept one hand on hers, pinning her in that spot, but his other hand roamed across her collarbone, bared now with only the thin straps of her bra and summer dress interrupting his stroke.
She didn't move, stayed perfectly still, but her breath grew heavy, her body warmed up. When he stepped in a little more, she dug her butt into his thighs.
What she felt there had her convictions wavering, but then he tilted her head around so he could claim her lips, her mouth.
This was so much better than the first time he'd kissed her in the closet. No ghosts, no angels, his warm, hard body rubbing against hers in a way she could never let anyone see but oh, my, exactly how she wanted him to. His hand rubbed over her ribs, barely brushing along the underside of her breasts, and yes, she could see why her sisters were good with leaving emotions behind in favor of the sensations. Another pass of his hand had her toes curling in her slippers.
A Christmas Demon for Clara Page 8